COLD CASE

by Jim Butcher

“You understand what you must do, ” said Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness.

It wasn’t phrased as a question.

I gripped the handrail on the side of the yacht and held on as it whumped and thumped through choppy water on the way toward a bleak shore. “I get it, ” I told her. “Collect the tribute from the Miksani. ”

Mab stared at me for a long moment, and that made me uncomfortable. It takes a lot to make that happen. I mean, you should see the stares my mother can give—Charity Carpenter is terrifying. And I got to where I could shake those off like nothing.

“Lady Molly, ” Mab said. “Regard me. ”

Not Look at me. Oh no. Not nearly dramatic enough.

I looked up at her.

We weren’t around any mortals at the moment, but we were technically moving through the mortal world, among the Aleutians, and Mab was dressed in mortal clothing. The Queen of the Winter Court of the Fey wore white furs and a big, poufy white hat like you might see on a Northern European socialite in an old Bond movie. No mortal alive would have been wearing white heels on the frozen, dripping, bucking deck of the yacht in those seas, in the beginnings of a howling winter storm, but she was Mab. She would take the path of least resistance when practical, but her willingness to tolerate the possible alarm and outrage of the human race extended only so far. She would wear what she felt like wearing. And at the moment, it would seem that she mostly felt like wearing an expression of stern disapproval.

My own clothing, I knew, disappointed her gravely, but I was used to doing that to mother figures. I was dressed in flannel-lined winter jeans and large warm boots, with several layers of sweaters, a heavy bomber jacket, and an old hunter’s cap with ear flaps that folded down. Practical, sturdy, and serviceable.

I didn’t need them any more than Mab needed the furs, but it seemed like it would be simpler to blend in—to a point, anyway.

“Appearances matter, young lady, ” Mab said, her voice hard-edged. “First impressions matter. ”

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression, ” I said, rolling my eyes.

I might have sounded a bit like this guy I know. Maybe a little.

Mab stared at me for a long second before she gave me a wintry smile. “Wisdom wrapped in witless defiance. ”

“Witless, ” I sputtered.

“I am offering you advice, ” Queen Mab said. “You have been a Queen of Faerie for less than a week. You would be wise to listen. ”

The yacht began to slow and then slewed to one side, throwing a wave of icy spray toward the rocky shore. It handled too well to be a mortal craft, but out here, where few eyes could see, the Sidhe who piloted her were only so willing to be inconvenienced by seas that would have daunted experienced mortal captains and advanced mortal vessels.

Not mortal, I told myself sternly, in my inner, reasonable voice. Human. Human. Just like me.

“Thanks for that, ” I said to Mab. “Look, I get it. My predecessor hasn’t performed her duties properly for, like, two hundred years. I’ve got a huge backlog. I’ve got a lot of work facing me. I understand already. ”

Mab gave me another long stare before saying, “You do not understand. ” Then she turned and walked back toward her cabin, the one that was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. “But you will. ”

I frowned after her for a second, then glanced at the thrashing twenty yards of sea between myself and the land and asked, “How am I supposed to go ashore? ”

Mab moved her eyes in what might have been an impatient glance, if she’d actually moved them all the way to me, and went into her cabin and shut the door behind her without a word.

I was left standing on the pitching deck. I glanced up at the Sidhe piloting the yacht. They were both male, both tall, both dark of hair and eye. Which was not my type. Even a little, dammit. One noticed me and met my gaze boldly, his mouth curling up into a little smirk, and my heart went pitty-pat. Or something did. I mean, he was a damned attractive man.

Except he’s not a man. He’s one of the Sidhe. He’s picked a look he knows you like for his glamour, and he’d cheerfully do things with you no human could possibly be flexible enough to manage, but he wouldn’t care.

My reasonable voice sounded a lot like my mom’s, which was more than a bit spooky.

Besides, I didn’t need him to care. I just needed him to look pretty while I tore his clothes off and. . .

I shook my head and looked away, out at the ocean. Being the Winter Lady brought a host of challenges with it. One of the most annoying was what had happened to my libido, which had never exactly lacked for health. These days, I was like an adolescent boy bunny rabbit. Everything had sex in it, no matter how much it didn’t or how hard I tried not to notice it. It was annoying, because I had a job to do.

The two extremely sexy Sidhe stared at me, being all smoldery and distracting, but not doing a damned thing to help me get ashore or prove myself on my first mission for the Queen of Air and Darkness. And since the last Winter Lady who had failed Mab wound up with a bullet in her skull, I figured I’d better not screw it up.

Which is what she’d meant about first impressions. It had been a polite threat, and, as I realized that, my legs felt a little wobbly.

Fine, then.

I called upon Winter. Big-time. I let the endlessly empty cold fill me, subsume me, and winds rose around me as the power of Winter flowed in. I let it freeze everything—my concerns of what would happen if I failed Mab, my curiosity about what was coming next, the lust inspired by the pilots (whom I suddenly realized had probably been placed where they had precisely to test my focus and resolve).

And then I let it out.

All my life, magically speaking, I had been used to being a spinner of cobwebs of illusion and mental magic. I’d always had enormous finesse, and always lacked the kind of power I had seen my mentor wield. I’d forced myself to adjust to the idea that I would always have to be subtle, indirect, manipulative—that that was the magic that was mine to command.

That was no longer true.

There was a thunder crack that thrummed from the surface of the sea as Winter’s ice froze the ocean ten feet down for half a mile in every direction. The yacht suddenly locked into place, no longer pitching and rolling.

I’d have to do the math to be sure, but I thought that little trick had taken as much energy to accomplish as fairly large military-grade munitions. The two pilots just stared at me, suddenly uncertain about what they were attempting to play with.

That’s right, pretty boys. Mess with me, I’ll hit you so hard your children will be born bruised.

I gave them a sunny little smile, vaulted the side rail, and walked to shore through howling winds before the ice started breaking up again.

They actually named the town Unalaska, Alaska. Despite the appeal of an innately oxymoronic name, Unalaska struck me as something closer to a colony on an alien world than as a mortal village. It’s a collection of homes and businesses around Dutch Harbor, famous for being the central port for the fishing boats on that show about how dangerous it is to catch crabs.

(Actual crabs. Literal ones, like, in the water. Sheesh, this Winter mantle thing is so childish sometimes, because it’s definitely not me. )

The buildings are all squat, sturdy, and on the small side—the better to resist massive winds and snows and rains and frozen ocean spray that turns to coatings of ice when whipped up by a storm. The town was surrounded by looming, steep, formidable mountains devoid of human markings, and clung to the limited flat spaces at their feet like some kind of lichen stubbornly hanging on in the shade of a large stone. The icy sea filled whatever vision was not occupied by the sky or the mountains, cold and uncaring and implacable. The sky overhead was a neutral grey, promising neither sunlight nor storms yet ready to deliver both with an impartial hand and little warning.

It wasn’t a place that was inviting, kind, or merciful to mere humanity, and yet there they were.

We were. There we were.

I trudged through freezing winds and half an inch of sleet that had hardened into something between ice and snow and didn’t shiver.

Harry Dresden once warned me about lying to myself.

I tried not to think about that too hard as I walked through the endless twilight of an Aleutian autumn and into town. I threw a glamour, nothing fancy, over myself as I went. I muddled my features from stark-boned beauty down to something much plainer. I darkened my hair, my skin, both of which were paler than usual, these days. I added on a few pounds, because I’d never really recovered the weight I’d lost when I was playing grim-dark superhero on the streets of Chicago, when Harry had been mostly dead. Everything about the look said unremarkable, and I added on the barest hint of an aura that I was an awfully boring person. It would be easier to move around that way.

Then I opened my senses to try to track down the elusive Fae who lived among the human population in Unalaska.

The wind was kicking up, with more rain and sleet on the way, and apparently the inhabitants of Unalaska knew it. No one was on the streets, and a few cars moved about furtively, like mice getting out of the way of a predator. I sensed a trickle of quivery energy coming from one low building, a place called the Elbow Room, and I went on in.

I was immediately subsumed in the energy of a crowded, raucous little dive. Music and the scent of beer, seared meat, and smoke flooded into my face, but worse were the sudden emotions that filled my head. There was drunken elation and drunken dread and drunken sullen anger and drunken lust; mainly, though, there were sober versions of all of those emotions as well. Threads of frustration and tension wove through the other emotions—servers, I imagined, overworked and cautious. Wariness rode steadily through the room from one corner, doubtless the bouncer, and cheerful greed hummed tunelessly under the rest, doubtless from the dive’s owner.

I’m a wizard and I specialize in delicate magicks. I’m awfully sensitive to people’s emotions, and running into this batch was like walking into a wall of none-too-clean water. It took me a moment to get my balance back, adjust, and walk inside.

“Close the door! ” someone shouted. I took note of a young man, his face reddened and chapped by frigid wind. “Christ, I been cold enough to freeze my balls off for days! ”

“That explains a whole hell of a lot, Clint! ” shouted another man from the far side of the bar, to a round of general, rough laughter.

I closed the door behind me and tried to ignore the sullen, swelling anger radiating off Clint. There was something very off about his vibe. When it comes to emotions, people and monsters have a lot in common. It takes a very, very alien mind to feel emotions that are significantly different than those you’d find in human beings—and there’s a vast range of them, too. Throw in mind-altering substances, like hormones and drugs, and it’s absolutely unreal the variety available.

But I recognized an angry sexual predator when I sensed one.

I faked a few shivers against the cold as I wedged myself in at the bar and nodded to the bartender, a woman who looked as if she might wrestle Kodiaks for fun on her days off, if she ever took a day off. I put down some cash, secured a beer, and felt an ugly presence crawling up my spine.

I took a sip of the beer, some kind of Russian monstrosity that tasted as if it had been brewed from Stalin’s sweat and escaped a Soviet gulag, and turned casually to find Clint standing behind me, about three inches too close, and breathing a little too hard.

“I don’t know you, ” he said.

“Wow, ” I said.

“What? ”

“That’s got to be the best opening line in history, ” I said, and swigged some more beer. Hairs probably didn’t start popping out on my chest, making little bing noises as they did, but I can’t swear to it. “Did you want something? ”

“I don’t know you, ” he repeated. His breath was coming faster, and there was a kind of glossy film on his eyes I didn’t like much. “Everyone knows everyone here. You’re new. ”

“But not interested, ” I said, and turned away.

He clamped a hand down on my shoulder, painfully hard, and spun me back around. “I’m talking to you. ”

Once upon a time, that sudden physicality would have made my adrenaline spike and my heart pound with apprehension. Now my whole head suddenly went icy-hot with anger instead. I felt my lips pull back from my teeth. “Oh, pumpkin, ” I said. “You should walk away. You aren’t going to like how this one plays out. ”

“You need to come with me, ” Clint said. He started to pull at me. He was strong. Wobbly on his feet, but strong.

“Take your hand off me before I lose my temper, ” I said, my voice very sharp, and pitched to carry to everyone in the room, even over the noise and music.

And I got almost no reaction from the room at all.

Now that was interesting enough to notice. Places like this were full of your usual blue-collar crowd. You wouldn’t find many philosophers or intellectuals here, but there would be plenty of basically decent people who wouldn’t think twice about taking a swing at an aggressor.

Except no one was even looking at me. Not one eye in the entire room. Everyone was staring at a tiny TV screen on a wall, playing a sports broadcast so grainy and blurred that I couldn’t even tell which game it was. Or they were focused on their drinks. Or at random spots on the wall. And the whole place filled with the sudden, sour psychic stench of fear. I turned my eyes to the two men at the bar next to me, and they only traded a look with the bartender, one that practically screamed out the words, Oh no, not this again.

What? Was Clint really that scary?

Apparently.

Certainly no help was coming. Which meant it was up to me.

“Let’s do this the fun way, ” I said. “I’m going to count down from three to one, and when I get to one, if you are still touching me, I’m going to put you on a therapist’s couch for the rest of your natural life. ”

“With me, ” Clint insisted, breathing harder. I’m not even sure he realized I had said anything.

“Three, ” I said.

“Show you something, ” Clint growled.

“Two, ” I replied, drawing out the number, the way Mary Poppins might have to unruly children.

“Yeah, ” Clint said. “Yeah. Show you something. ”

“O—” I began to say.

I didn’t get to finish the word. A man seized the middle finger of Clint’s hand, the one on my shoulder, snagged the other fingers with his other hand, and bent the single finger back. There was a snapping sound like a small tree branch breaking, and Clint let out a scream.

The newcomer moved with calm efficiency. Before Clint could so much as turn to face him, the new guy lifted a foot and drove his heel down hard at a downward angle into the side of Clint’s knee. There was a second crack, louder, and Clint dropped to the floor in a heap.

“I don’t think the lady likes you doing that, ” the newcomer said, his voice polite. He was a little over medium height, maybe an inch or two shorter than me, and built like a gymnast, all compact muscle and whipcord. He wore nondescript clothes much like my own, his features were darkly handsome, and his black eyes glittered with a feverish, intelligent heat.

I also knew him. Carlos Ramirez was a wizard, and a Warden of the White Council. He was only a couple of years older than me, and hotter than a boy-band bad boy’s mug shot, and I instantly wanted to jump him.

Whoa. Down, girl. Just because you’re the Winter Lady doesn’t mean you have to behave like your predecessor did. Look where it got her.

“Miss? ” he asked me. “Are you all right? ”

“Yes, fine, ” I said.

“I apologize for that, ” he said. “Some things just shouldn’t happen. Excuse me for a moment. ”

And with that, Carlos reached down, snagged Clint by the back of his coat, and dragged him to the door. Clint started feebly thrashing and swatting at Carlos, but the young wizard didn’t seem to notice. He dragged Clint to the door and tossed him out into the sleet. Then he shut the door again and turned back to face the room.

Everyone was staring at him. The jukebox was wailing a song about broken hearts, but the talk in the room had died completely. The fear I’d sensed earlier had ratcheted up a notch. For a frozen moment, no one moved. Then one of the customers reached for his wallet and started counting bills onto his table. Everyone else started following suit.

Within five minutes the place was empty except for us and the bartender.

“What the hell is this about? ” Carlos murmured, watching the last patrons depart. He looked over his shoulder at the bartender. “Was that guy the sheriff’s kid or something? ”

The bartender shook her head and said, “I’m closing. You two need to leave. ”

Carlos held up a twenty between two fingers. “Beer first? ”

The bartender gave him an exasperated look, took a step to her left, and then said, “Do you understand me, mister? You need to leave. Both of you. ”

“That a pistol or shotgun you got back there? ” Carlos asked.

“Stick around. You’ll find out, ” the bartender said.

The fear coming off her was nauseating, a mortal dread. I shook my head and said to Carlos, “Maybe we should. ”

“Mostly frozen water is falling from the sky, I’m starving, and I haven’t had a drink yet, ” Carlos said. He asked the bartender, “There another place for one? ”

“Charlie’s, ” she replied instantly. “Other side of the bay. Green neon sign. Good burgers. ”

Carlos squinted his eyes and studied the bartender, as if weighing the value of heeding her words versus the personal pleasure he would take in being contrary.

Harry Dresden has had a horrible influence on far too many people, and has much to answer for.

“Okay, ” he said mildly. “Miss, would you care to join me for a meal? ”

“That would be lovely, ” I said.

So we left and started trudging through the sleet.

The sound of it hitting the ground and the sidewalks and roads was a wet rattle. I didn’t need to, but I hunched my shoulders as if against the cold and dropped my chin down to my neck as much as I could. “Goodness, this is brisk, ” I said.

“Is it? ” Carlos asked.

“Aren’t you cold? ”

“Of course I am, ” Carlos said. “But I figured the Winter Lady would think this was a balmy day. ”

I stopped in my tracks and stared at him for a moment.

He offered me a sudden, mischievous smile. “Hi, Molly. ”

I tilted my head to one side. “Mmm. What gave it away? ”

He gestured toward his eyelids with two fingertips. “Seeing ointment, ” he said. “Cuts right through glamour. I’ve got eyes all over this town. When they spotted a lone young woman walking in from the far side of the island, I figured it was worth taking a peek. ”

“I see, ” I said. “Carlos, tell me something. ”

“What’s that? ”

“Do you mean to arrest me and take me before the White Council? Because that isn’t going to fit into my schedule. ”

I’d had some issues with the White Council’s Laws of Magic in the past. The kind of issues that would have gotten my head hacked off if Harry hadn’t interceded on my behalf. But then he mostly died, and I’d been on my own, outside of his aegis. The Wardens, including Carlos Ramirez, had hunted me. I’d evaded them—always moving, always watching, always afraid that one of the grim men and women in gray cloaks would step out of a tear in the fabric of reality right in front of me and smite me. I’d had a recurring nightmare about it, in fact.

But they’d never caught up with me.

“Molly, please, ” Ramirez said. “If I’d wanted to find you and take you to the Council, I would have found you. Give me that much credit. I even sandbagged a couple of the ops sent to bring you in. ”

I frowned at him. “Why would you do that? ”

“Because Harry liked you, ” he said simply. “Because he thought it was worth sticking his neck out to help you. Besides, I had my own area to cover, and in the absence of a Warden, you were giving the Fomor hell. ”

They hadn’t been the only ones with a surplus of hell. I hadn’t been having much fun, either. “Why didn’t the Council appoint a replacement, then? ”

“They tried. They couldn’t get anyone to volunteer to take Dresden’s place as the Warden of the Midwest. ”

“Why not, I wonder. ”

“Lots and lots of problems and not enough Wardens, ” Carlos replied. “With the Fomor going nutballs, we’re up to our necks and sinking already. Plus, everyone they asked had a good opinion of Harry, and nobody wanted to inherit the enemies he’d made. ”

“So, to clarify, ” I said, “you’re not here to bring me in. ”

“Correct, Miss Carpenter. It would be a little awkward now that you’re royalty. And, frankly, I have no intention of crossing Mab if I can possibly help it. Ever. ”

“Then why are you here? ” I asked.

A boyish smile flickered over his face, and something inside me did a little quivering barrel roll. “Maybe I just wanted to meet the famous new Queen of the Winter Court, ” he said.

I fluttered my eyelashes at him and said, “Don’t you trust me, Carlos? ”

The smile faded a little and then turned wry. “It isn’t personal, Molly. But from what I hear, you’re a sovereign executive entity of a foreign supernatural nation, one that is on formal and unsteady ground with the White Council. ”

I felt myself grinning more widely at his mistake. “So it’s Council business, then, ” I said.

His lips pressed into a grimace and he said, “No comment. ”

“So formal, ” I said. “What did you think of that scene in the bar? ”

“Weird, right? ” he said.

“Do you know what I think I’d like to do? ”

“Circle back and watch the place to see why everyone was leaving? ”

I winked at him. “I was going to say, ‘Find a warm spot to make out, ’ but, sure, we can do that if you’d rather. ”

Carlos blinked several times.

Actually, I kind of blinked, too.

The past few years had been hard ones. I’d gotten used to walling people away. My libido had shriveled up from lack of use. I’d barely been able to allow Harry to come near me. And now here I was, flirting with the really, exceptionally cute Carlos Ramirez, as if I were a girl who enjoyed flirting.

I remembered that girl. I used to be that girl. Was that also a part of what Mab had done for me when she arranged to have me ascend to be the Winter Lady? Because if it was. . .

I liked it.

Should that be scaring me? I decided that I didn’t want to worry about that. It was just such a relief to feel that kind of feeling again.

I pursed my lips, blew Carlos a little kiss, and turned to circle back toward the Elbow Room. It took him about five seconds to begin to follow me.

We found a shadowy spot next to a building within sight of the Elbow Room. I flicked up a veil to make sure we wouldn’t be observed, and we settled down to wait.

It didn’t take long. Within five or ten minutes, a silent column of men, twenty strong, came down the road, their feet crunching through the half-frozen sleet. Clint was at the head of the column with another man, a very tall, very lean character with a captain’s peaked cap, leathery skin, and the dull, flat eyes of a dead fish. They marched up to the Elbow Room and filed inside, neat as a military unit on parade. No one said a word the entire time.

“Huh, ” Carlos noted. “That’s not odd at all. ”

“No kidding. Dive Bar of the Damned. ” I frowned. “They look like locals to you? ”

“Waterproof boots and coats, ” he said. “Fishermen, likely. ”

“Like, Clint’s shipmates? Do shipmates come get involved in bar fights for their fellow shipmates? ”

“Do I look like somebody who knows something like that? I’m from LA. ” He scratched his nose. “The question I’m having trouble with is, are there people who are willing to get into a fight for the sake of a jackhole like Clint? ” He squinted. “Can I ask you something, Molly? ”

I grinned at him. “It’s pretty early in the season to entertain any more proposals, Carlos. ”

In the dark it was hard to tell, but I think his cheeks turned a few shades of color. It was actually kind of adorable. “What are you doing here? ” he asked.

“Talking to the Miksani, ” I said, or tried to say. To my intense surprise, what came out was, “Talking to prospective make-out partners. ”

Carlos grimaced. “I’m serious. ”

I tried to say, Miksani, but what came out was, “So am I. ”

“Fine, ” he said, “be that way. ”

Why the hell would that be happening to me? Unless. . . it was a part of Winter Law.

The Winter Court of Faerie had an iron-clad code of law laid out by Mab herself. It didn’t work like mortal law did. If you broke it, you didn’t get punished. You didn’t break it. Period. You were physically incapable of doing so. When Mab laid down the law, the beings of her Court followed it, whether they wanted to or not. They actually knew the law, on a subconscious level, but it took a real effort to summon it to your conscious mind. I took a slow breath and realized that any of the Hidden Peoples of the Winter Court were entitled to their privacy and could not be outed to the mortals or anyone else without their prior consent.

I let out a breath through my teeth and said, “It’s not personal. I can’t talk about it. ”

He frowned at me for a moment and then said, “What about a trade? ”

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours? ” I asked. “I like the way you think. ”

“Wow, ” he said, and now I was certain his cheeks were flaming. “Wow, Molly. That’s not. . . It isn’t. . . Could you please take this seriously for a minute? ”

I smiled at him, and as I did, I realized that a trade changed everything with regard to the law. Bargains had to be balanced in the proper proportions and in similar coin. That, too, was Winter Law. If Carlos told me why he was present, I’d be free to say more about my purpose in kind.

“Deal, ” I said.

“We got a report from Elaine Mallory through the Paranet, ” Carlos said, watching the door to the Elbow Room. “Vague descriptions of a strange vibe and unusually odd activity here in Unalaska. People going missing, weird behavior, energy out of whack—that kind of thing. Someone had to check it out. ”

“Huh, ” I said.

“Your turn. ”

“Mab sent me, ” I said. “I’m here to collect on a debt. ”

I felt his eyes on me for a moment, and then he said, “You’re. . . Mab’s bagman? ”

“Bagperson, ” I said. “Though I think it’s more like a tax collector. ”

“They’re just bagmen for the government, ” he replied. “What happened? One of the Miksani piss Mab off? ”

I lifted my eyebrows at him. “You know of them? ”

“Duh. Wizard, ” he said. “Jeez, Molly, give me a little credit. ”

I found myself smiling at him. “It’s internal Winter Court business. ”

He nodded. “It occurs to me that if there is a tribe of Fae here, they probably know a whole lot about strange things happening in their town. ”

“That does seem reasonable, ” I said.

“It seems like we both might benefit from mutual cooperation, ” he said. “If I help you with your job, maybe you could help me with mine. ”

Help from a mortal, on my first job? Mab wouldn’t like that.

On the other hand, I was pretty sure that when it came to me filling the role of the Winter Lady, Mab wasn’t going to like a lot of things I did. She might as well get used to it now.

“I think that could work out, ” I said. “Provided you help me with my job first. ”

“Molly, ” he said, and put his hand on his chest. “You wound me. Do you think I’d welch on you? ”

“Not if we do my job first, ” I said sweetly. “You know Winter well enough by now to know that I’ll do what I say I will. ”

“Yes, ” he said simply. He offered me his hand and said, “Do we have a deal? ”

I reached for his hand, but apparently bargains weren’t closed with handshakes under Winter Law. So I drew him toward me by his hand, leaned over, and placed a soft kiss on his mouth.

Suddenly there was nothing else in the world that mattered. Nothing at all. Just the soft heat of his lips on mine, the way he drew in a sudden, shocked breath, and then an abrupt ardor in returning the kiss. Something shuddered through me, a frisson of pleasure like the deep-toned toll of an enormous bell. The kiss was a symbol. Both parties had to agree to a kiss to make it happen like this one.

After a time, the kiss ended and my lips parted from his, just a little. I sat there panting, my eyes only half-open, focused on nothing. My heart was racing and sending bursts of lust running through my body that began to pool in my hips.

I wasn’t sure what the hell was happening to me exactly, but it felt incredibly. . . right.

That probably should have scared me a little.

Carlos opened his eyes, and they were absolutely aflame with intensity.

“We have a deal, wizard, ” I whispered. Then I shivered and rose, stepping away from him before my mouth decided it needed to taste his again. “Let us begin. ”

I focused my will, quietly murmured, “Kakusu, ” and brought up the best veil I could manage—which is to say, world-class. It was one of the first things I learned to do, and I was good at it. The light around us dimmed very slightly, and we vanished from the view of anyone who wasn’t going to extreme supernatural measures to spot us. The mix of sleet and rain could be problematic, since anyone who looked closely enough would see it bouncing off an empty hole in the air. But nothing is perfect, is it?

I nodded to Carlos, and we padded quietly across the street to circle the Elbow Room. A building that spends half the year mostly buried in snow doesn’t go in for a lot of windows. The only two in the place were side by side, deeply recessed, and high up on the wall, to let in light.

We both reached up and got a grip on the slippery sills, and then quietly pulled ourselves up to peer into the bar.

The fishermen were standing facing the bar in two neat lines. Their scrawny leader in the captain hat was staring at the bartender, who stood behind the bar, gripping a cloth like some kind of useless talisman. Her face had gone pale and was covered in beads of sweat. She trembled so violently that it threatened her balance, and she just kept repeating the same phrase, loudly enough to be heard through the window, over the sleet: “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. ”

Captain Fisherman took a step forward, toward her, and the strain on her face immediately increased, along with the volume and desperation of her voice. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know! ”

“Psychic interrogation, ” I noted. Invading a human being’s mind was a monstrous act. It inflicted untold amounts of horrible damage, not to their brain but to their mind. The sensations it could cause were technically known as pain, but the word really doesn’t do them justice. If someone went digging in your head long enough, they’d leave you a mindless vegetable, or hopelessly insane.

I knew, because I’d done it. I’d had the noblest intentions in the world, but I’d been younger, dumber, and a lot surer of myself, and people had been hurt.

Carlos let out a growl beneath his breath. “And we have a Third Law violation. And there’s no way that’s an accident or even badly misguided benevolence. ”

“Assuming he’s mortal, ” I whispered. “If he isn’t, then the laws don’t apply to him. ”

“Either way, his head is coming off. ”

“Cool, ” I said. “Who is he? ”

“Who cares? ”

“What’s he doing here? ”

“Breaking the laws. ”

“Uh-huh, ” I said. “I wonder how many friends he has. ”

In my peripheral vision, I could see the muscles along Carlos’s jaw contract and then relax again. I glanced aside and saw him visibly force down his anger and shake his head a little. “I’m taking him down. Just as soon as I find out exactly who he is, how many buddies he has, and what designs he has on this town. ”

“Oh, ” I said innocently. “Is that not what you meant the first time? ”

He started to mutter an answer when his fingers slipped on the slickened windowsill and he fell.

He didn’t make much noise. A little scrape on the wall and a thump as he hit the ground—but the captain’s head whipped around in a turn at least forty-five degrees too great to take place on a human neck, his eyes narrowed. He paused for about two seconds, and then spun on a heel and started walking for the door.

“Company, ” I hissed to Carlos. I dropped down quietly from the window. My feet did not slip on the ice, because, hey, Queen of Winter over here. I moved quickly and crouched over him, putting my hands lightly on his chest. “Stay flat and stay still. I’ll keep you covered. ”

He looked down at my hands and gave me a quick look, then his expression went focused and stoic and he lay back on the sleet-covered ground.

I did everything I could to shore up the veil covering us both. The captain stepped out of the Elbow Room and looked around, and I got a close look at the man for the first time.

There was visibly something wrong with him. At a casual glance, it might have looked like he’d simply been exposed to a little too much cold and ultraviolet radiation and freezing salt water. But the cracks in his skin were a little too sharp edged, the reddened portions a little too brightly colored for that. I got the slow and horrible impression that his skin was trying to contain too much mass, like an overstuffed sausage. There were what looked like the beginnings of cataracts in his eyes—only their edges quivered and wobbled, like living things.

That was pretty weird, even by my standards.

It got absolutely hentai-level weird when the man opened his mouth and then opened it a little wider, and then opened it until his jaw visibly unhinged and a writhing tangle of purplish red tentacles emerged and thrashed wildly at the air, as if grasping for scents.

I felt my mouth stretch into a widening grin. A sleet storm was a terrible place for scent-hunting. I couldn’t tell you how I knew that, but I knew it as certainly as I knew that he hadn’t noticed the flaws in my veil. This was not the territory of this creature, whatever it was. It was mine.

The tentacles withdrew with a whipping motion, like a frog recovering its tongue. The captain swayed from foot to foot, looking around the night for a moment, and then turned and paced back into the bar. A moment later, the whole weirdly silent column of fisherman freaks, including Clint, marched out of the bar and back down the hill toward the harbor. Clint was walking on his broken knee as if it didn’t particularly bother him that it was bent inward like that.

“What the hell? ” Carlos breathed as they walked away. “What was that? ”

“Right? ” I asked him. An absolutely mad giggle came wriggling up out of my belly. “That was the most messed-up thing I have ever seen from that close. ” I looked down at him, put my hand up to my mouth, and made gargling sounds while wiggling my fingers like tentacles.

And suddenly I realized that I was straddling Carlos Ramirez. And that he was staring at me with dark eyes that I felt like I could look at for a good, long while.

“Do you know what I want to do? ” I asked him.

He licked his lips and then glanced at the retreating group. “Follow them? ”

“Yes, all right, ” I said, and swallowed. “Follow them. We can also do that. ” I rose and helped him up.

“Wait—what? ”

“I’m flirting with you, dummy, ” I said, and smiled at him. “What, you can’t work and banter at the same time? After all your big talk? ”

He lifted a hand, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment. “Dios. This. . . is very much not what I was expecting for this evening. And hang on. ” He ducked back around the corner of the Elbow Room, and a moment later emerged with a small bundle of gear. In a few seconds, he was donning the gray cloak of the Wardens of the White Council and buckling on a weapons belt that bore a sword on one side and a large pistol on the other.

“Swords and guns, ” I said. “Hot. ” I picked up a corner of the cloak and wrinkled my nose. “This, though. . . Not. ”

“Wardens do a lot of good, ” he said quietly. “It isn’t always pretty, what we do, but it needs to be done. ” He nodded toward the retreating backs of the captain and his crew. “Like those. . . things. Someone has to do something. ” He smiled faintly as he started walking in their wake. “You and Dresden can’t be everywhere. ”

I watched him for a moment, taking in details. “You’re limping, ” I noted. It was a weakness, and it stood out to me. It might not have before.

“Should have seen me a month ago, ” he said. “Could barely get out of my chair. Chupacabra kicked me in the back. Come on. ”

I could see the pain in his movements now, and cataloged them on pure reflex. His back was too rigid, much more so than it had been before. The fall from the window had aggravated injuries that hadn’t healed properly. That could be used against him.

I wish thoughts like that didn’t come to me so naturally, but after months fighting the Fomor on Chicago’s streets, months under the instruction of the Leanansidhe, they were second nature.

I folded my arms against a little chill that had nothing to do with the weather and hurried after the handsome young Warden.

The weather continued worsening as we reached the waterfront. It wasn’t far from the Elbow Room, but far was a relative term when a viciously cold wind was driving sleet and icy spray up the slope and into our faces. To me, it was brisk but actually a little bit pleasant. But for the sake of camaraderie, and definitely not because I wanted to conceal my increasing levels of weirdness from Carlos, I emulated him. I bowed my head against the wind and hunched my shoulders while hugging my own stomach.

“Who would live in this? ” Carlos growled, shuddering.

“People smart enough to stay indoors during this kind of weather? ” I suggested. “Tentacular parasites? Obstinate wizards? You come to Alaska but you don’t plan for the cold? ”

He couldn’t really roll his eyes very well when his lashes were becoming steadily encased in ice, but he came close. “Maybe you’d like it back in your cell, Your Highness. ”

I flashed him a quick grin, and then we kept on following the captain and his crew. They wasted no time in marching back to a waterfront pier and boarding a ship with the name Betsy Lee painted across her stern. They filed up the gangplank, neat as you please, and went belowdecks, all without hesitating or looking back—and all in total silence.

We watched for a moment more, and then Carlos nodded and said, “I’m thinking freak fuel explosion. Boat burns to the water in moments, takes them with it. ”

“Wow, ” I said.

“Not yet, ” he said. “Not until I’m sure it’s only them. Just thinking of the shape of things to come. ”

I looked up and down the waterfront, what I could see of it through the weather, and said, “Well, we’re not sitting out here all night and babysitting the boat. ” And we weren’t going to be moving quietly around the Betsy Lee, either, not with all that ice on the deck.

But I could.

“I’m going to take a peek around, ” I said. “Right back. ”

“Whoa, ” Carlos said. “What? Molly. . . ”

I ignored him and ran lightly over the short distance to the dock and down it, and then leapt lightly out onto the deck of the ship. My feet didn’t slip, and a continuous series of rippling shivers ran up and down my spine. I was putting myself in danger, treading into the territory of what was clearly a dangerous predator, and it felt really, really good.

Is that what happened to Maeve? Had she gotten a little too fond of the feeling of danger? I mean, she’d spent years defying freaking Mab. Could it get more dangerous than that?

I shook my head and started scouting the ship, relying on my instincts. Harry’d always been a good source of advice about problems. He dealt with them on a continuous basis, after all, and in his studied opinion, if you had one problem, you had a problem. But if you had multiple problems, you might also have an opportunity. One problem, he swore, could often be used to solve another, and he had stories about a zombie tyrannosaurus to prove it.

The Miksani had several centuries’ worth of a spotless record in paying tribute to Mab. They’d stopped only a few years ago. As diverse and fickle as the beings of Faerie could be, they rarely did things for no reason. And, lo and behold, in this same little town in the middle of more nowhere than any other little town I had ever seen, tentacular weirdo critters were conducting a quiet reign of terror.

Chances that these two facts were unrelated? Probably close to zero.

I didn’t want to take my chances in the confined spaces belowdecks—that was a losing proposition for me, if it came to a confrontation. So I conducted a quick survey of the deck, the bridge, and the fishing paraphernalia stored on it, keeping my steps as light and silent as I could. I spotted it just before deciding to leave again: a single dark feather gleaming with opalescence, pinned between two metal frames of what I presumed to be crab cages, stored and ready to drop into the sea.

I felt a little surge of triumph, took it, and leapt lightly back to the deck. I rejoined Carlos a moment later. He was sliding his gun into its holster. He’d been ready to start shooting if I got into trouble. And they say there are no gentlemen anymore.

“What’d you find? ”

I held it up, grinning.

“Feather? ”

“Not just a feather, ” I said. “A cormorant feather. ”

He peered at me. “How do you know that? ”

I didn’t want to say something like I Googled it under Winter Law, but the mantle of power I’d inherited from Maeve knew all about Mab’s subjects, and the knowledge it contained flowed through me as certainly as lessons learned in childhood. “How do you think? ” I asked instead.

He struck his head lightly with the heel of his hand and said, “Durr. The Miksani. ”

“Elementary, Watson, ” I said, and winked at him before I started walking. “I suggest you bring your pistol, just in case. ”

“Just in case of what? ” he asked, turning to follow.

“In case the Miksani decide they aren’t in the mood for company. ”

Iliuliuk Bay is the next-best thing to four miles long, and that makes for a lot of shoreline. We had to walk around the bay to get to the portion of Unalaska that was physically farthest from the dock where the Betsy Lee was moored. The weather stopped worsening and held steady at torturously miserable levels. Carlos drew up his cloak’s hood and trudged along stoically.

It took time, but we reached a log building on the edge of town that bore a sign that read UNALASKA FISH MARKET. A pair of cormorants—large, dark seabirds—huddled on a protruding log at the building’s corner, taking partial shelter from the night beneath the eaves of the building’s roof. I could feel their dark, bright eyes on me as I approached the darkened building, but I didn’t head for the door. Instead I went straight to the birds.

“Greetings to the Miksani from the mistress of Arctis Tor, ” I said in formal tones. “I, her appointed representative, have come for the tribute rightfully due the Winter Court. I believe that a meeting with your elders could produce positive results for all parties. ”

The birds stared at me hard. Then, as one, their eyes swiveled to Carlos.

He lifted a hand and said, “Warden Ramirez of the White Council of Wizardry. I apologize for showing up at the last minute, but I come in peace, and would appreciate a meeting with your elders as well. ”

The two birds stared at him for a moment and then looked at each other. One winged away into the night.

The other flapped its wings, soared down to the ground not far from us, and shimmered. A second later, the cormorant was gone, and an entirely naked young woman crouched where it had been a moment before. She had the bronze skin and almond eyes of someone with a generous helping of Native American blood in her veins, and her hair was nearly longer than she was, dark and glossy, with faint flickers of opalescence in it. She couldn’t have been older than me, and she was built like a swimmer, all supple muscle and muted curves.

Her eyes were agate hard. The anger boiled off her in waves.

“Now? ” she demanded of me. “Now you come? ”

“I’m kind of new at this, ” I said. “This was actually my first stop. I’m Molly, the new Winter Lady. ”

The girl narrowed her eyes, staring a hole in me as she did. She was silent for a full minute before she spat, “Nauja. ”

“It’s nice to meet you, Nauja, ” I said.

The simple pleasantry got a suspicious look and narrowed eyes in response. Apparently, Maeve had left quite an impression on the locals. That girl had been a real piece of work.

“I have nothing to say to you, ” Nauja said, her tone carefully neutral. She turned to Carlos and inclined her head in something resembling politeness, only a lot stiffer. “Wizard Ramirez. We have heard of you, even here. You have done much for one so young. ”

Carlos gave her his easy, confident grin. “Just wait until I’m old enough to get my driver’s license. ”

Nauja stared at him for a second and then looked down sharply, her cheeks turning a few shades pinker. Not that I could really blame her. Carlos was pretty darned cute, and he could kiss. My lips tingled faintly in memory, and I folded my arms so that I could rub at my mouth unobtrusively.

Maybe three minutes later, the door to the fish market opened and candlelight shone weakly out into the foul weather of the night. Nauja rose immediately and walked inside. There was a young man about her age waiting inside, wearing a heavy flannel robe. He had another one waiting, and wrapped it around her shoulders carefully before nodding to us and standing aside so that we could enter.

We went in, and the young man shut the door behind us. It took a couple of seconds for our eyes to adjust to the low candlelight, and then I saw why the Miksani were so upset.

They were in the middle of a funeral.

A dead man of middle years, resembling Nauja enough to be her father or uncle, lay on a table in the middle of the room. He was dressed in a mix of practical modern clothing and native garb, maybe sealskin, richly decorated in beads and ivory. His hands were folded on his chest, and a bone knife or spearhead of some kind lay beneath them. Nauja and her male counterpart took up positions on either side of a woman of middle age who stood beside the body, her expression drawn with grief. The three of them stared at me expectantly.

Carlos stepped close enough to me that he was almost touching. His hip bumped mine deliberately, and he looked up at the rafters of the little market building.

Dozens of bright eyes were staring down at us. I couldn’t tell how many cormorants lurked in the rafters, but they were everywhere, and waiting with the silent patience of predators.

I dragged my eyes from them back to the elder woman facing me. “I am Molly, the new Winter Lady, ” I said in what I hoped was a respectful, quiet tone. “I’ve come for the tribute. ”

“I am Aluki, ” said the woman in a quiet voice. She gestured toward the bier. “This is my husband, Tupiak. We sent to you for help years ago. ”

“I take it no help came, ” I said.

Aluki stared at me. Nauja looked like she wanted to fling herself on me and rip my eyes out.

“Well, the problem has been addressed, and now I’m here, ” I said. “Let’s set things straight. ”

“What do you know of our troubles, ” Aluki said.

“I know they’re on the Betsy Lee, ” I said.

Nauja’s eyes suddenly became huge and black, and she all but quivered in place.

Carlos stepped between us and nodded respectfully. “Elder Aluki, I am Warden Ramirez of the White Council of Wizardry. We’ve been made aware of difficulties in this place. I’m here to help. If I can be of service in restoring balance to the Miksani, I will be glad to do so. ”

Aluki inclined her head to Carlos. “We are not a wealthy people, Warden. I cannot ask for your help. ”

Of course not. The Miksani were of Winter, and the Fae never gave or accepted gifts or services without equal recompense. The scales of obligation had to remain balanced at all times.

“You need not, ” Carlos responded. “I’ve come to a bargain with Lady Molly, who has already offered payment on your behalf. ”

Oh, that was an excellent gesture on Carlos’s part. And it worked. Aluki gave me another glance, one more thoughtful, before she nodded.

“My predecessor, ” I said, “failed to make me aware of her obligations before she passed. Please tell me how Winter may assist you. ”

“No, ” Nauja hissed, surging toward me.

Aluki stopped the younger Miksani with a lifted hand, her eyes on me. Then she said, “Our enemy has arisen from the deeps and taken mortal shells. Each season, they take some of our number. ”

“Take? ” Carlos asked. He nodded toward the dead Miksani. “Like that? ”

Aluki shook her head and spoke in a level, weary tone. “The enemy has power. Our people survive by hiding among the mortals. Few of us are warriors. Only Tupiak, Nauja, and Kunik had the power to challenge the enemy. They tried to rescue those who had been taken. They failed. My husband was wounded and did not survive. ”

“Your enemy has captives? ” I asked. “Right now? ”

She nodded and said, “On the ship, belowdecks. While they are captive, there will be no tribute. ”

“Well, then, ” I said. I exchanged a glance with Carlos. He gave me a wolfish grin and nodded. I nodded back and said to Aluki, “The Warden and I are going to go get them out of there. ”

She lifted her chin. “You can do this? ”

“I can, ” I said. “I will. ”

There was a low thrum in the air as I spoke the words, and I felt something go click somewhere in my head. I had just made a promise.

And Winter kept its promises.

Aluki stared at me for a moment, then sagged, bowed her head, and nodded. “Very well. ”

“Your people who were taken, ” I said, “how will I know them? ”

Nauja bared her teeth and spoke with her jaw clenched. “They took our children. ”

“God, I love hero work, ” Carlos said as we stepped back out into the storm. “No murky gray area, no anguished questions, no conflicting morality. Bad guys took some kids, and we’re gonna go get ’em out. ”

“Right? ” I asked him, and nodded. “This must be what my dad felt, all the time. ”

“Knights of the Cross never have any missions they question? ” Carlos asked.

“I think they get a different kind of question, ” I said. “For Dad, it was always about saving everyone. Not just the victims. He had to try for the monsters, too. ”

“Weird, ” Carlos said.

“Not so weird, ” I said. “Maybe if someone had offered a hand to the monsters, they wouldn’t have become monsters in the first place. You know? ”

“I don’t, ” Carlos said. “Maybe I’ve seen too many monsters. ” He settled his weapons belt a little more comfortably on his hips and wrapped himself up in his cloak again. “Or too many victims. I don’t know. ”

Our steps crunched in the sleet, and between that and the rattle of more sleet and the crash of waves on the shore, I almost didn’t hear his next words.

“About six months into the war, ” he said, “I was carrying pliers with me, so that I could take vampire teeth as trophies. That was how much I hated them. ”

I didn’t say anything. Carlos, like a lot of the other young Wardens of the Council, had been baptized in fire. Harry had spoken of it once while doing his best to shield me from the war. He’d felt horrible leading a team of children, as he saw it, into a vicious conflict between the White Council and the Red Court:

I feel like I’m putting them through a meat grinder. Even if they come home in one piece.

“You hated them. And then they were gone, ” I said.

“Poof, ” Carlos said. “War over. ” He shook his head. “Odium interruptus. And then it was supposed to be back to business as usual again. Just supposed to move on. Only I never quite figured out how. And half the bunks in the barracks were empty. ”

“Part of you misses it, ” I said.

His lips tightened, though it wasn’t a smile. “I miss the certainty, ” he said. “I miss how tight I was with the squad. The rest I can mostly do without. ” He glanced at me and then away. “The Wardens’ job isn’t always simple. Or clean. I’ve done things I’m not proud of. ”

“Haven’t we all? ” I said.

We walked in silence for a few steps. Then he said, “Once we get these kids clear, I want to kiss you again. ”

My tummy did a little happy cartwheel, and my heart sped up to keep it company. “Oh yeah? What if I don’t want to? ”

He gave me a very direct, very intense look. His eyes were dark and hot and bold.

“You want to, ” he said.

He wasn’t wrong.

We stole up to the Betsy Lee under my best veil, moving quick and quiet. We’d already worked out the plan. Carlos was going in first and was going to raise a hell of a racket and attract everyone’s attention. My job was to stay veiled, grab the kids, and get them off the ship.

Then we’d kill things.

But halfway across the deck toward the door leading below, Carlos paused. He tilted his head to one side and narrowed his eyes. He glanced at me, lifting his brows in an unspoken question.

I paused, frowned at him, and then looked carefully around the deck. It was empty. The boat rolled and pitched with the waves, but there was no other motion upon it. It was still and silent as a tomb. In fact. . .

It just felt empty, like an apartment with no furniture, like a school playground on the weekend.

Carlos suddenly moved faster, gliding to the stairs. He held up a hand, telling me to wait, and went down them in a rush. He reappeared within a minute.

“Empty, ” he reported. “There’s no one down there. ”

“Dammit, something must have tipped them off, ” I said.

He nodded. “They’ve got eyes somewhere, all right. ”

I went back to the dock and then to where it met dry land. I couldn’t see very well, but I murmured, “Akari, ” flicked my wrist, and created an orb of glacial green light in the air over my right shoulder. Green was a good color for this kind of work. The mortal eye can detect more shades of green than any other color on the spectrum.

I cast back and forth, but it took only a few seconds to find what I was after: a depression in the accumulating sleet, the marks of the passage of many feet. “Carlos, ” I said, and pointed at the ground. “Tracks. ”

He came over and squinted down. “Aren’t these where they came back to the boat the first time? ”

“Can’t be, ” I said. “Our tracks from an hour ago are gone. These were made after we left. ”

He lifted his eyebrows. “Seriously, Aragorn? Where’d you learn this stuff? ”

“Mom taught me. She was scoutmaster for my brothers. ”

“And to think I wasted my youth learning magic, ” Carlos said. “Can you tell if the kids were with them? ”

“Dammit, man. I’m a Faerie Princess, not a forensic analyst. ” I jerked my head to tell him to follow me, and we set out after our quarry.

The trail ended at a church.

It was a Russian Orthodox church, complete with a couple of onion domes, and the sign out front read HOLY ASCENSION OF OUR LORD CATHEDRAL. It was also creepy and ominous as hell in the freezing night. Odd blue-green light glowed within the windows of the sanctuary. I thought I saw a shadow move past a window, sinuous and smooth, like a cruising shark.

“Oh, ” Carlos said, stopping short. I could see calculations and connections forming behind his eyes. “Uh-oh. ”

“What-oh? ”

“This just got worse. ”

“Why? ”

He licked his lips nervously. “Uh. How much Lovecraft have you read? ”

“I haven’t kept track, ” I said. “Somewhere between zero and none. Should I have? ”

“Probably, ” he said. “It’s always the last thing a formally trained apprentice learns about. ”

“I have a funny feeling my training wasn’t formal, ” I said.

“Yeah. Neither was Harry’s. Have you heard of the Old Ones? ”

“I don’t think it’s a very kind nickname for the Rolling Stones. They still put on a great show. ”

He nodded and squinted at me. “I kind of need you to put on your serious face now. ”

“That bad? ” I asked.

“Maybe, ” he said. “They’re. . . kind of a collection of entities. Really old, really powerful entities. ”

“What, like gods? ” I asked.

“Like the things gods have nightmares about, ” he said.

“Outsiders. ”

He nodded. “Only they aren’t outside. They’re here. Caged, bound, and sleeping, but they’re here. ”

“That seems kind of dangerous. ”

“Yes and no, ” he said. “They feed on psychic energy. On fear. On the collective subconscious awareness of them that exists within humanity. ”

I squinted at him. “Meaning what? ”

“The more people who know about them and fear them, the more awake and more powerful they become, ” he said. “That’s why the people who know about them don’t talk about them much. ”

“What’s that got to do with the price of beer in Unalaska? ”

“One of the Old Ones is known as the Sleeper. It’s said his tomb is somewhere under the Pacific. And that goddamned moron Lovecraft published stories and easy-to-remember rhymes about the thing. ” He shook his head. “The signal boost gave the Sleeper enough power to influence the world. It has a number of cults. People get. . . infested, I guess. Slowly go insane. Lose their humanity. Turn into something else. ”

I remembered the captain’s open mouth and writhing tentacles and shivered. “So you think that’s what is happening here? A Sleeper cult? ”

“It’s the Holy Ascension of Our Lord Cathedral, ” he pointed out. “That means something way different to a Sleeper cultist than it does to most folks. They aren’t exactly making it difficult to suss out. ”

“Okay. So, how does that change anything about what we have to do tonight? ”

He nodded toward the cathedral. “You feel that? ”

“It’s capital-C creepy, ” I said, and nodded.

“It’s worse than that, ” he said. “It’s holy ground. Consecrated to the Sleeper. We go in there, we won’t be dealing with a bunch of ’roided-up fishermen with tentacle mouth. They’ll have power. It’s a nest of sorcerers in there. ”

“Oh, ” I said. “Ouch. ” I thought about it for a moment. “So how does that change anything about what we have to do tonight? ”

He bared his teeth. “Guess it doesn’t. ”

“I guess it doesn’t, ” I agreed.

“You know, ” he said, “I am pretty damned valorous. ”

“I know, ” I said.

“But I am not stupid. You’re a Faerie Queen now, right? ”

“Uh-huh, I guess, ” I said.

“Couldn’t you whistle up a squad of ogres or something to help make this happen? ”

I thought about it for a second and said, “Yeah, I could. ”

“Maybe something like that should happen? ” he suggested.

I was quiet for a second before I said, “No. ”

“Uh-huh, ” he said, and nodded. “Why not? ”

“In the first place, it would take time to get them here. In the second, this is Miksani territory, and the ogres would have to arrange payment for intruding and observe customs, and it would take even longer. And in the third place. . . ”

I blinked. Oh. That’s what Mab meant.

“What? ” Carlos asked.

“This is my first showing. Everyone in Winter, every wicked and predatory thing in Faerie, is going to pay attention to it, and will interact with me based off what I do here. First impressions matter, and I’m not going to be a child who screams for help the first time she hits a bump in the road. I’m going to be the predator who freaking takes you apart if you cross her. I’m going to make sure I don’t have to prove my strength to them over and over for the rest of this gig. So, you and I are going to go in there and handle it. ”

Carlos sniffed, then gave a short nod. “Right. Well. These people—they aren’t human anymore. Something else moved into their bodies. There’s nothing left to save. You get me? ”

I got him. He meant that I could play hardball without fear of running afoul of the White Council. I squinted at the cathedral and said, “Okay. New plan. ”

Harry was a big believer in kicking in the teeth of whoever you planned to fight. Granted, those kinds of tactics played to his strengths, and it wasn’t always smart or possible—but it was always a way to seize the initiative and control the opening seconds of a conflict.

Granted, Harry would have used fire. And I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have pulled out a wand and prepared the One-Woman Rave spell I’d developed. And I’m absolutely certain that he wouldn’t have taken a moment to start up DJ Molly C’s Boom Box spell, which would play C& C Music Factory’s “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)” loud enough to be heard in Anchorage.

But I did. I wanted loud noise that was totally out of place and as weird as possible to whatever supernatural critters were riding around inside the fishermen—and the creatures of the supernatural world aren’t exactly pop-culture mavens. Plus, it was dance music from the ’90s. Nobody thinks that stuff is normal.

Heavy bass and lead power chords started thumping against the windows. I turned loose the One-Woman Rave, and the air around me filled with a light and pyrotechnics show that would make Burning Man look like Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. My heart started pounding in fear and excitement and something disturbingly like lust as I crossed the last few feet to the cathedral’s entrance.

And then, just as the song screamed, “Everybody dance now! ” I leaned back, drew the power of Winter into my body, and kicked the big double doors off their hinges as if they’d been made of balsa and Scotch tape.

At which point I learned the real reason Harry keeps doing that.

It. Is. Awesome.

“Give me the music! ” I screamed with the song, and walked straight in. I might have had some hip and shoulder action going in time with the beat.

Look, I hadn’t been out dancing in a while, okay?

I crossed the little vestibule in a couple of steps and passed into the sanctuary in a thundercloud of rave lights and showers of multicolored sparks, music shaking the air. I got a good look at the fishermen as I came in.

All twenty of them were there, scattered around the sanctuary, though three, including the captain, were up on the altar, along with half a dozen Miksani children, aged about four through ten. Their wrists were bound together with one long length of rope, which cut cruelly into their wrists.

Everyone in the cathedral lifted a hand to shield their eyes as I came in. The cultists’ mouths gaped open and tendrils emerged to begin thrashing the air.

I felt the surge of power coming, an ugly, greasy pressure in the air, and as it gathered, physical darkness swirled and surged around the fishermen. And then, like a stream of fouled water, it surged from each of the cultists to the captain, where his tentacles gathered it, whipping and writhing, and sent the enormous collective surge of negative energy flying directly at me.

It came fast, too fast to dodge, too intense to be stopped by any magic I could manage, and struck my solar plexus like an enormous, deadly spear.

Or, at least, that’s what it looked like, to them. I was actually about ten feet to the left, hidden behind my best veil while maintaining a glamour of my image. The bolt struck my little illusion, and the conflict of energies, combined with the difficulty of running the Rave and the Boom Box, made it too much to hold together. The image popped like a soap bubble, and the dark bolt tore through the flooring and foundation in the vestibule like a backhoe.

The captain froze for a second, unsure of what had just happened. I had no such moment of hesitation. I was already rushing down the leftmost aisle behind my veil, plastic-handled knife in hand. I reached the first of the tentacle-mouthed fishermen and, with a single flick, cut his throat.

I could barely hear the creature’s sudden, high-pitched scream of pain over the thunder of the Boom Box, and I’d known it was coming. It didn’t register on the other fishermen in the chaos, and I didn’t slow down.

I killed three of them with my knife before one of the cultists saw what was happening and screamed, pointing.

Number four went down when he turned his head to look, but he writhed as he went down and I was splashed with blood.

Magically speaking, blood is significant in all kinds of ways. It carries a charge of magical energy inside it, for example, and can be used to direct a spell at a specific person from hundreds or thousands of miles away. This blood was stronger than mortal stuff and carried a heavier charge. The power in it flared into sparks as the blood hit my veil, and then it ripped a huge hole in it, and I was suddenly visible to the entire cult.

Another bolt of energy came my way, this one tossed by an individual cultist. It lacked the landscape-rearranging power of the first bolt, and I was lucky it did. I threw up a shield of enough strength to barely deflect it, and dove to the floor as others came winging my way, chewing chunks the size of my fist from the wall behind me.

From the floor I couldn’t see much—but the cultists were howling and they had to be coming closer, sending their nearest members to rush me while the others kept me pinned down with their blasts of dark power. If I didn’t move, and fast, I would be swarmed. Winter Queen or not, that wouldn’t end well for me.

I let go of the remnants of the veil, crystallized a new spell in my mind, and gave it life. Then I hopped up and ran for the exit.

I also hopped up and ran down the nearest aisle of pews. I also hopped up and sprinted toward the altar. I also hopped up and started vaulting the pews diagonally, heading for the nearest fisherman. I also hopped up and backed up one step at a time, conjuring what looked like a heavy energy shield in front of me. I also hopped up and hurled a blast of deep blue energy at the captain. I also hopped up and. . .

Look, you get the idea: thirteen Mollies started running everywhere.

Blasts of dark power ripped apart pews and tore holes in the walls and shattered panes of stained glass. Some of them struck home, disintegrating the images, but the others continued to move and duck and evade.

Meanwhile, I stayed low and scramble-crawled twenty feet into the concealment of the confessional. I had done what I meant to do: entirely occupy the cult’s attention.

Carlos made his entrance in perfect silence. The wall behind the altar was made of dark wood, but it just. . . fell apart into freaking grains of matter in an oval six feet high and three across, revealing the young Warden on the other side.

Without ceremony, Carlos pointed at a cultist, muttered a word, and a beam of pale green light struck it in the back. The man-creature simply dissolved into a slurry of water and what looked like powdered charcoal. The young Warden didn’t miss a beat. Before the first cultist was done falling to the floor, he drew his sword and ran it smoothly into the nape of another cultist’s neck. The creature arched for a second and then dropped like a stone, his mouth moving in frantic, silent screaming motions.

The captain whirled on Carlos and unleashed a wave of dark energy the size of a riding lawn mower. The Warden dropped his sword, slid his back foot along the floor, and dropped into a crouching stance. His arms swept up in smooth, graceful symmetry and intercepted the energy, gathering it like some kind of enormous soap bubble.

It was a water magic spell, Carlos’s specialty. He rolled his arms in a wide circle, took a pair of pirouetting steps, and swept his arms out toward the captain, sending the dark spell roaring back at him. It hit the captain like a small truck, hurtling him off the stage and halfway down the sanctuary.

“Come on, kids, ” Carlos shouted. He recovered his sword and almost contemptuously deflected an incoming blast of cultist magic with it. “I’m taking you home! ”

The little Miksani didn’t have to be told twice. They got up, the larger children helping the smaller ones, and began hurrying awkwardly toward the escape route Carlos had created on the way in. He shielded them, backing step by deliberate step, calling up a shield of energy with his left hand, intercepting blasts of energy with it, or swatting them wide with his Warden’s blade.

In a few seconds, he’d be out of the room, along with the Miksani children, leaving me with nothing but cultists. I tensed and began to gather my energy.

And then Clint’s reddened, work-roughened, clammy-cold hand shot into the confessional and seized my throat. It caught me off guard, and the sudden pain as his fingers tightened and he shut off my air supply was indescribable. He lifted me and, without hesitating for a second, began to slam me left and right, against the walls of the confessional, each impact horribly heavy, with no more passion than a man beating the dust from a rug.

My head hit hardwood several times, stunning me. My knees went all loose and watery, and suddenly the Rave and the Boom Box were gone. The next thing I knew, I was being dragged by the neck toward the altar. Clint walked up onto it and threw me down on my back on the holy table. I blinked my eyes, trying to get them to focus, and realized that the cult was gathered all around me, a circle of tentacle-mouthed faces and dead eyes.

Carlos and the kids were gone.

Good.

“It isn’t a mortal, ” Clint said, somehow speaking through the tentacles, albeit in a creepy, inhuman tone. “See? It’s different. It doesn’t belong here. ”

“Yes, ” the captain said.

“Kill it. It cost us our sacrifice. ”

“No, ” the captain said. “You are new to the mortal world. This creature’s blood is more powerful than generations of the Miksani and their spawn. ” The tentacles thrashed more and more excitedly. “We can drain her and drain her. Blood more powerful than any we have spilled to pave the way for the Sleeper. Our Lord shall arise! ” The captain’s eyes met mine and there was nothing behind them, no soul, nothing even remotely human. “And he shall hunger. Perhaps. . . ”

“Perhaps you should think about this, ” I said. I think my sibilants had gone slushy. “Walk right now. Leave this island and don’t come back. It’s the only chance you have to survive. ”

“What is survival next to the ascendance of our Lord? ” the captain asked. “Bow to Him. Give yourself of your own will. ”

“You don’t know who I am, do you, squid-for-brains? ” I asked.

“Bow, child. For when He comes, His rage will be a perfect, hideous storm. He will drag you down to his prison and entomb you there. Forever silent. Forever in darkness. Forever in terrible cold. ”

“I am Lady Molly of Winter, ” I said in a silken voice.

The thrashing tentacles went abruptly still for a second. Then the captain started to shout something.

Before he could, I unleashed power from the heart of Winter into the cathedral, unrestrained, undirected, unshaped, and untamable. It rushed through me, flowed through me, both frozen agony and a pleasure more intense than any orgasm.

Ice exploded out from me in swords and spears, in scythes and daggers and pikes. In an instant, crystalline blades and points, a forest of them, slammed into being, expanding with blinding speed. Ice filled the cathedral, and whatever was in its way, living or otherwise, was pierced and slashed and shredded and then crushed against the sanctuary’s stone walls with the force of a locomotive.

It was over in less than a second. Then there was only silence, broken here and there by the crackle and groan of perfectly clear ice. I could clearly see the cult through it. Broken, torn to pieces, crushed, their blood a brilliant scarlet as it melted whatever ice it touched—only to freeze into ruby crystals a moment later.

It took the captain, impaled against the cathedral ceiling, almost a minute to die.

And while he did, I lay on the holy table, laughing uncontrollably.

The ice parted for me, opening a corridor perhaps half an inch wider than my shoulders and the same distance higher than my head. I walked out slowly, dreamily, feeling deliciously detached from everything. I had to step over a hand on the way out. It twitched in flickering little autonomic spasms. I noted idly that it probably should have bothered me more than it did.

Outside, I found Carlos and the Miksani children. They were staring at me in silence. The sleet made the only sound. Few lights glowed in windows. Unalaska was battened down against the storm, and other than us, not a creature was stirring.

I closed my eyes, lifted my face to the storm, and murmured, “Burn it down. ”

Carlos stepped past me without a word. I felt the stirrings of power as he focused his will into fire so hot that the air hissed and sizzled and spat as he brought it forth. A moment later, warmth glowed behind me, and the crackle and mutter of rising flames began.

As we walked away, one wall was already covered in a five-foot curtain of flame. By the time we got the children back to the fish market, the cathedral was a beacon that spread an eerie glow through the sleet and spray. A few lights had come on, and I could see dark figures and a couple of emergency vehicles near the pyre, but there would be no saving the place. It was set a bit apart from the rest of Unalaska, in any case. It would burn alone.

Cormorants had begun to circle us, their cries odd and muted in the dark, and the children looked up with uncertain smiles. When we reached the market and went in, Aluki and Nauja were waiting for us. Nauja let out a cry and rushed forward to embrace the smallest girl, a child who cried out, “Mama! ” and threw her arms around the Miksani woman’s neck.

Cormorants winged in from out of the night through the open door, assuming human form with effortless grace as they landed. Glad voices were raised around the children, and more parents were reunited with their lost little ones. There were more hugs and laughter and happy tears.

That, I thought, should probably make me feel more than it does as well.

Carlos watched it with a big, warm grin on his face. He shook some hands and nodded pleasantly and was hugged and clapped on the shoulder. As I watched him, I felt something finally. I was admiring his scars, the memory of his skill, his courage, and I had an absolutely soul-deep need to run my fingers over him.

No one came within five feet of me—at least, not until Aluki crossed the room from the bier where her husband still lay, facing me.

“I assume you wish the tribute now, ” she said in a low voice.

I felt dark, bright eyes all over the room, focusing on me.

“I need rest and food, ” I said. “I will return when the storm breaks, if that is acceptable. ”

Aluki blinked and her head rocked back. “It. . . yes. Of course, Lady Molly. Thank you for that. ”

I gave her a nod and turned toward the door. Just before leaving, I looked over my shoulder and asked, “Carlos? Are you coming with? ”

“Ah, ” he said, and his smile changed several shades. “Why—why yes, I am. ”

By the time we reached Carlos’s hotel, the storm was raging.

And the weather had gotten worse, too.

Neither of us spoke as we reached his room, and he opened the door for me. It was a nice hotel, far nicer than I would have expected in such isolation. I walked in, dropping my coat to the floor behind me. It hit the ground with the squelching sound of wet cloth and crackles of thin ice breaking. Layers of shirts joined it as I kept walking into the room, until I was down to skin.

I felt his eyes on me the whole way. Then I turned slowly and smiled at him.

His expression was caught somewhere between awe and hunger. His dark eyes glittered brightly.

“You’re soaked and frozen, ” I said quietly. “Get out of those clothes. ”

He nodded slowly and walked toward me. His cloak and coat and shirts joined mine. Carlos Ramirez had the muscles of a gymnast, and his body was marked here and there with scars. Strength. Prowess. I approved.

He stopped in front of me, down to his own jeans. Then he kept walking toward me until our bodies met, and he pressed me gently down to the bed behind us. My eyes closed as I let out a little groan when I felt the heat of his skin against my chest, and I flung myself into the kiss that came next like the world was about to vanish into a nuclear apocalypse.

The sudden explosion of desire that radiated out from him felt like sinking into a steaming-hot bath, and I reveled in it, my own ardor rising. My hands slid over his chest and shoulders, reached around to his back. He was all tight muscle, heat, and pure passion. His mouth wandered to my throat, then to my shoulders and breasts, and I let out groans of need, encouraging him.

Molly, said the voice of my better reason.

His mouth left me for a second as he pulled off my boots. I arched up to help him remove my jeans, and heard him kicking off his own. With an impatient growl, I sat up and ripped at his belt.

Molly, said reason again. Hello?

I flung the belt across the room, to tell reason to shut up, and tore at his jeans. I had never wanted anything so badly in my life as I wanted Carlos naked and pressed against me.

This isn’t you, said reason.

I pushed his jeans down past his hips. God, he was beautiful. I took his hand and leaned back on the bed, drawing him with me. “Now, ” I said. My voice came out thick and husky. “No more waiting. Now. ”

He let out a groan as he kissed me again, and I felt him start to touch and then—

—and then I was sitting on the floor of the shower, shuddering, hot water pouring down around me.

Wait.

What?

What the hell?

I looked down at the water. The drain stopper was down, and it was seven or eight inches deep.

And pink.

Oh God.

I looked at my hands. My nails. . . my nails looked longer. Harder.

And there was red under them.

What had just happened?

I stood up and left the shower, dripping wet, not bothering to stop for a towel. I hurried back out of the bathroom and stopped in the doorway, shocked.

The room had been wrecked. The mattress was against the far wall—and the door. It had been torn in half. The lamps were out, and the slice of light from the bathroom lights provided the only illumination in a stark column. What I could see of the furniture had been trashed. Part of the bed frame was broken.

And Carlos. . .

He lay on the floor, covered in blood. One of his legs was broken, the pointy bits of his shattered shin thrusting out from the skin. His face was swelling up beneath the blood, his eyes puffed closed. He was covered in claw marks, rakes that oozed blood. He lay at a strange angle, twitching in pain, one hand clutching with blind instinct at his back.

His injured back. His weakness.

I stared down at my hands in utter horror, at the blood beneath my nails.

I had done this.

I had used his weakness against him.

“Mab, ” I breathed. I started choking and sobbing. “Mab! Mab! ”

Mab can appear in a thunderclap if she wants to. This entrance was much less dramatic. A light in the far corner of the room clicked on and revealed the Queen of Winter, seated calmly in the chair in the corner. She regarded me with distant, opalescent eyes and lifted a single eyebrow.

“What happened? ” I asked. “What happened? ”

Mab regarded Carlos with a calm countenance. “What will happen every time you attempt to be with a man, ” she replied.

I stared at her. “What? ”

“Three Queens of Summer; three Queens of Winter, ” she said, that alien gaze returning to me. “Maiden, mother, and crone. You are the maiden, Lady Molly. And for you to be otherwise, to become a mother, would be to destroy the mantle of power you wear. The mantle protected itself—as it must. ”

“What? ”

She tilted her head and stared at me. “It is all within the law. I suggest you spend a few hours each day meditating on it in the future. In time you will gain an adequate understanding of your limits. ”

“How could you do this? ” I demanded. The tears on my checks felt like streaks of hot wax. “How could you do this? ”

“I did not, ” Mab said calmly. “You did. ”

“Dammit, you know what I mean! ”

“You have been gifted with great and terrible power, young lady, ” Mab said in an arch tone. “Did you really think you could simply go about your life as if you were a mortal girl? ”

“You could have warned me! ”

“When I tried, you had no inclination to listen. Only to jest. ”

“You bitch, ” I said, shaking my head. “You could have told me. You horrible bitch. ” I turned to go back into the bathroom, to get towels and go to Carlos’s aid.

When I turned, Mab was right behind me, and her nose all but pressed against mine. Her eyes were flickering through shades of color and bright with cold anger. Her voice came out in a velvet murmur more terrifying than any enraged shriek. “What did you say to me? ”

I flinched back, suddenly filled with fear.

I couldn’t meet her eyes.

I didn’t speak.

After a moment, some of the tension went out of her. “Yes, ” she said, her voice calm again. “I could have told you. I elected to teach you. I trust this has made a significant first impression. ”

“I have to help him, ” I said. “Please step aside. ”

“That will not be necessary, ” Mab said. “He will not be in danger of dying for some hours. I have already dispatched word to the White Council. Their healers will arrive momentarily to care for him. You will leave at once. ”

“I can’t just leave him like this, ” I said.

“That is exactly what you can do, ” Mab said. Her voice softened by a tiny fraction of a degree. “You are no longer what you were, child. You must adapt to your new world. If you do not, you will cause terrible suffering—not least of all to yourself. ” She tilted her head, as if listening, and said, “The storm is breaking. You have your duty. ”

I clenched my jaw and said, “I can’t just leave him there alone. ”

Mab blinked once, as if digesting my words. “Why not? ”

“Because. . . because it’s not what decent people do. ”

“What has that to do with either of us? ” she asked.

I shook my head. “No. I am not going to be like that. ”

Mab pursed her lips and exhaled slowly through her nose. “Stubborn. Like our Knight. ”

“Damned right I am, ” I said.

I’m not sure you can micro-roll your eyes. But Mab can. “Very well. I will sit with him until the wizards arrive. ”

I turned to regard Carlos’s broken form lying on the floor. Then I hurried into enough clothes to be decent. I knelt over him and kissed his forehead. He made a soft moaning sound that tore something inside my chest.

“I’m sorry, ” I whispered. I kissed his head again. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what would happen. I’m sorry. ”

“Time waits for no one, Lady Molly, ” Mab said. She had crossed the room to stand across from me over poor Carlos. “Not even the Queens of Faerie. Collect the tribute. ”

I gave him a last kiss on the forehead and rose to leave. But I paused at the door to consider, to consult Winter Law.

I had never really considered what the tribute was. But it was there in the law. I turned slowly and stared at Mab in horror.

“Their children, ” I whispered. “You want me to take their children. ”

“Yes. ”

“Their children, ” I said. “You can’t. ”

“I won’t. You will. ”

I shook my head. “But. . . ”

“Lady Molly, ” Mab said gently. “Consider the Outer Gates. ”

I did.

Winter Law showed me a vivid image. An endless war fought at the far borders of reality. A war against the pitiless alien menace known simply as the Outsiders. A war fought by millions of Fae, to prevent the Outsiders from invading and destroying reality itself. A war so long and bitter that bones of the fallen were the topography of the landscape. It was why the Winter Court existed in the first place, why we were so aggressive, so savage, so filled with lust and the need to create more of our kind.

“You’re filling me with a hunger I can never feed, ” I whispered.

“We cannot expect our people to bear a burden that we do not, ” Mab replied, her tone level, implacable. “You will learn to endure it. ”

“You want me to take children, ” I hissed.

“I am fighting a war, ” Mab said simply. “Fighting a war requires soldiers. ”

“But they’re children. Children like my little brothers and sisters. And you want me to carry them away. ”

“Of course. It is the ideal time to learn, to be trained until they come into their strength and are ready to do battle, ” Mab said. “It is the only way to prepare them for what is to come. The only way to give them a chance to survive the duties I require of them. ”

“How long? ” I asked through clenched teeth. “How long will they be gone? ”

“Until they are no longer needed, ” Mab said.

“Until they’re killed, you mean, ” I said. “They’re never going back home. ”

“Your outrage is irrelevant, ” Mab said. Her voice was flat, calm, filled with undeniable logic. “I have condemned millions of the children of Winter to a life of violence and death in battle, because it must be done. If we fail in our duty, there will be no home to which they can return. There will be no mortal world, safe and whole for your brothers and sisters. ”

“But. . . ” My protest trailed off weakly.

“If you have an alternative, I would be more than willing to consider it. ”

Silence stretched.

“I don’t, ” I said quietly.

“Then do your duty, ” Mab said.

I opened the door and looked back at her. “I don’t yet, ” I said, and I said it hard. “This isn’t over. ”

Mab gave me the slow blink again. Then she inclined her head by a fraction of an inch, her expression pensive.

I turned and left the broken form of Carlos Ramirez behind me to steal away the Miksani’s children.

And I couldn’t stop crying.

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